Matt Medved: New Chapter

10 Questions

It’s been a busy year for Billboard Dance founder and DJ, Matt Medved. This summer the New Yorker was promoted to Director, Dance & Electronic Programming and Cross Department Content Strategy at Billboard; he became the only DJ to perform three years in a row at the Billboard Hot 100 Festival; and he hosted the first ever Electronic Music Awards on September 21st alongside DJ and producer Hannah Rad.

In this second interview with Billboard Radio China among other things Matt talks about the growth of Billboard Dance, music curation and developing a new artist model.

On Billboard Dance Matt talks about going from the early days as a “one man show” to building a full team, including recently hiring Editorial Assistant, David Rishty; the support he gets across Billboard; and, his plans in his new role to “apply some of the strategies that we used to build [Billboard Dance] to some of the other verticals as well.”

Matt previously spoke to us about how he views the work of a DJ as an exercise in empathy, connecting to and reading crowds on a second-to-second basis. Extending this concept, Matt explains how his work as a DJ and producer is an extension of his role at Billboard Dance. As a curator for Billboard Dance, Matt’s goal is to share new music with people without preaching to them, which led for example to giving Kygo his first Billboard feature before the artist had ever left Norway and working with Marshmello to introduce his work to the world. Also Matt’s passion for finding new music that might resonate with a wide audience is something that he tries to apply to his own music, and not just everyday at Billboard Dance.

On developing a new artist model Matt discusses the issue involved in a time when, “any kid with a Macbook and a working knowledge of BitTorrent could make industry standard music.” Arguing that kids have the ability to create sounds in their bedrooms that could come from state of the art studios, Matt suggests that the issue at hand becomes that curators and listeners are over-flooded with music, making the process of discovery and success much harder to attain for young artists, so key to Matt’s discovery process is finding artists that stand out for one reason or another, artists who are unique in their own way.

Speaking of standing out and being unique, you can check out the full interview atBillboard Radio China and explore, in depth, exactly what’s making Matt Medved tick.